My friend's 11-year-old daughter made a very mature attempt to reset a toxic relationship with a friend of hers at the beginning of the school year. She asked if they could leave the drama behind and start anew. Does it surprise you that the drama started up again about a week later? Probably not.
Attempts at simplifying international relations are typically fool's errands, but personal relationships are not a bad analogy and in fact, can be a pretty decent way to introduce IR theory to undergraduates. Yet, despite the hard lessons we've all learned about difficult, even toxic relationships, politicians go back time and time again to the idea of some sort of new beginning when it comes to international relationships. Lie with my friend's daughter, the intention might be a sincere and mature attempt at change. Yet, we all know that this rarely works for personal relationships, let alone, the relations between countries that are fraught with ideological, cultural and historical differences.
One prominent example of a failure turn around a difficult relationship is Hillary Clinton's ill-advised gift of a 'resetbutton'to then Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov at the start of the Obama administration. More recently, former Vice President Joe Biden talked on the campaign trail about his plan to restore alliances if he succeeds Trump in the White House. This is still an open question, especially since Democratic candidates have little interest in discussing foreign policyin debates or on the campaign trail.
In early September, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo paid Europe a two-day visit with the stated goal of a “reset” in U.S.-European relations. It's notable that he only met with the EU's new and incoming leaders, European Parliament President David Sassoli as well as the Commission President-elect Ursula von der Leyen, Council President-elect Charles Michel, and the nominee for foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell. He did not meet with Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (who serves until November 1st) or Council President Donald Tusk (who serves until December 1st), the idea being that he could reboot this relationship with a set of fresh faces. U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland put it this way: "We've had some great successes together in various areas but we also want the impasses to go away and sometimes the way to make the impasses go away is to change the players on the field."
Given all that has gone on in this relationship since President Donald Trump has taken office, the following question begs to be asked: Do they think European leaders are stupid?
Sure, a change in leadership can be an opportune time to turn the page on past animosity, but this would make sense if the outgoing European leadership had been the aggressor. This is not the case. It might also make sense if Trump had had some sort of revelation about his past behavior and sent Pompeo with a message of recognition and repentance. This didn't happen. It seems that the whole operation rests on the hope that the new leadership has lived in some sort of bubble these past few years and are unaware of the Trump administration's bullying and bad behavior towards the European Union.
Let's take a moment to remember some of the highlights starting with the messenger himself. Pompeo himself gave a speech at the German Marshall Fundin December of 2018, in which he attacked the European Union, United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. Shortly afterward the U.S. State Department downgraded status of EU mission to U.S., designating it as an international organization rather than a national delegation. EU Ambassador David O'Sullivan wasn't even given the dignity of a notification, instead, he began to notice that his status had been reduced at such affairs as the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush.
But these two incidents are nothing compared to the visceral attacks from the president himself. Trump's repeated attacks on the EU, whether it be characterizing the union as a foe on trade (“Europe treats us worse than China”), his well-known support for Brexit (“European Union is being so tough on the United Kingdom and Brexit”) or his anger with the EU's competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, ("she hates the United States perhaps worse than any person I've ever met.”) Then there are the awkward moments with European leaders such as refusing to shake Angela Merkel's handfor the cameras or brushing dandruff offEmmanuel Macron.
To be sure, Trump's disagreements with Europe have not been about small matters, but they have most often represented a sharp departure from his predecessors in substance and knowledge. For example, his ongoing criticism of NATO has showed a deep lack of understanding about the institution. He has especially seethed about allies who don't “pay their fair share”, but what was most shocking was his refusal to affirm his support for the critical Article 5 that stipulates the collective defense agreement. To much dismay in Europe and around the world, Trump has kept his promise to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement as well as the Iran Nuclear agreement.
Given all this, why on earth would the Trump administration even want to attempt to bring about a new era of U.S.-EU relations?
Optimistically, this administration is finally realizing the historic and current value of a strong partnership with Europe and sincerely wants a fresh start. If this is indeed the case, we might expect a change in tone in Trump's tweets and speeches. The annual UN conference in September will be the perfect opportunity to see this in action. More pessimistically, Trump's low approval rating on foreign policy may have finally sunk in, along with the fact that it leaves Trump open to attacks from Democrats in the upcoming 2020 election. Either way, this sudden wish to cozy up with the new European leaders is hard to take seriously. Which is the trouble with this sort of thing. Lasting relationships are, after all, built on trust over the long term.
This is not the first time the transatlantic relationship has soured. In fact, the first nearly two decades of the 21stcentury have been quite a transatlantic relationship roller coaster. I'll never forget the reaction here in Europe to 9/11 and how people here in Spain told me time and again that an attack like that on the U.S. was an attack on us all. But former President George W. Bush squandered that good will on a misadventure in Iraq, putting transatlantic relations into a tailspin. While the Bush administration's disdain for the UN and multilateralism as it got into that war was a big departure from his father's foreign policy, it wasn't necessarily a new trend among Republicans. Conservative ideology tends towards realism in international affairs, which includes a deep skepticism for multilateralism.
Public opinion of the United States in Europe and particularly, opinions of the U.S. President are particularly telling since the turn of the century. The Pew Research graphic titled “Confidence in Trump remains low in key EU countries” is a dramatic representation of how European's have seen Bush, then Obama, then Trump. Spain may have the lowest opinion of Trump, but it was also at the low end of opinion about Obama and Bush. All isn't lost when the sitting U.S. president isn't liked: further data shows that while opinion does tend to rise and fall with opinion of the president, Europeans do appear to differentiate the two.
But the question at hand it about whether resets can happen in international relations, particularly the transatlantic relationship. This seemed to happen when Obama was elected. The end of the Bush years coincided with the election of the first African American to the White House. This had an enormous effect on public opinion in Europe among the general population and leaders. And while Obama did indeed bring his message of hope to Europe, he also frustrated many because his “pivot to Asia” meant that he didn't always pay Europeans the attention that they thought they deserved.
Eight short years later, relations between the U.S. are back at a historic low and arguably worse. During the Bush years, Robert Kagan wrote his seminal essay “Power and weakness” noting that “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less.” This metaphor was borrowed from the popular book at the time titled “Men are from Mars and women are from Venus,” and unfortunately, conflated power and masculinity. The essay, later turned book, conceptualized power only in its hard form and even at that, almost exclusively military might. Without acknowledging economic strength or soft power, Europe indeed seems rather weak and Kagan's essay is a window into conservative thinking about Europe and why they tend to see weakness in multilateralism.
Not to mention, European dependence on the U.S. for defense. This strategic agreement which allowed Europe to rebuild after World War II has far surpassed its expiration point. It not only frustrates America's conservatives that many European countries, including Spain, are nowhere near the 2% GDP NATO defense spending target, it also frustrates progressives who are envious of Europe's social welfare programs. To be fair, Trump isn't the first president to call on European countries to make progress towards this target, Obama did the same, but he was nice about it. I have writtenthat a more unified Europe on defense might be one of the positive things to come out of the Trump presidency, but it will be a bit sad if it ends up being Trump's nasty rhetoric—as opposed to Obama's polite words—that finally mobilizes Europeans on this issue.
All that said, Kagan very publicly opposed Trump's candidacy and has been a vocal critic of his foreign policy that has chipped away at the very international order that was built to benefit the U.S. and also Europe. This breaking up of the international order will be the biggest impediment to any sort of rekindling in U.S.-European relations either while Trump is still in office or when someone new moves into the White House in either 2021 or 2025.
In the meantime, incoming European leaders would do well to think twice before cozying up to the Trump administration, especially behind closed doors as they did with these last meetings. With European public opinion of Trump as low as it is and European leaders already seen as very distant from their constituencies, anything short of total skepticism on their part will just make them look naïve and perhaps as dumb as the Trump administration seems to think they are.
This article was published in Spanish on esglobal.